Secret #1 “People like us do things like this”

Here is the first in a series of five posts that aim to show you how creative journaling  as a daily habit can become the foundation of your creative work!

The color lines trace the flow of ideas for Xygorg's chicken.

Are you one of us or one of them?  When we look up, we see a mama whale and her calf swimming across the sky.  They see clouds.  When we look down, we see an ant carrying his fishing pole.  They see a bug.  We see five happy turtles having a picnic.  They see some rocks.  

For us, everything is alive.  Everything is symbolic.  Everything is a story.  People like us carry our journal everywhere we go.   Waiting at the dentist office, you will see us scribbling away.  At the coffee shop, you find us busy with our journal notes and doodles.  

Here's the secret.  It's easy to make journaling an everyday habit because that's what people like us do.  We need to belong and feel connected to our community, our tribe, our culture of journals and sketchbooks.    

In the overwhelming avalanche of life circumstances, sometimes, who we are gets muddled-up.  But once we get it clear again, we have this very comfortable feeling of belonging and fitting in with our tribe that embraces journaling as an everyday practice. 

Once we get back on track with our journal, the unexpected happens.  There is an eclectic collision and mix-up of lines and forms that begin to emerge through a jumble of smudges and a superimposed layer of notes.  What used to be a messy juxtaposition of disassociated scribbles, doodles, and text, now, somehow relate. It is clearly suggestive of a story begging to be told.  It is the whale in the clouds that has come to the surface of the page to stir the juices of our imagination.

For more about the psychology of 'people like us', read Seth Godin's article People Like Us.

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